This is an interesting study that seems to show that plants growing in urban areas (Leicester in fact) can make a significant contribution to carbon sequestration. The example is similar to what Permaculture originator Bill Mollison was saying 30 years ago – lawns are deserts (that also use a large amount of petrochemicals) – growing more trees makes a difference and also provides useful products for a local economy.

However, the research calculates the static carbon sink – the amount locked away, not the annual sequestration rate – it would probably be salutary to compare that to the rate of CO2e produced in urban areas (and in their ecological footprint).

Thee plans all propose to reduce carbon emissions but they differ greatly in the pace of change proposed. As we will see they also differ in how they think they will get there. The figure plotted is the proportion of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions as a percentage of the 1990 baseline.

click to see larger version

Below is the table of data that sits behind the graph. To give a common basis for comparison I have had to interpolate some date and also because SEAP uses 2005 for its baseline year I have converted their figures to a 1990 basis.

1990

2005

2020

2030

2050

Carbon reduction target (target CO2e as % of baseline)

SEAP

100

95

62.7

38

11.4

UK carbon budget no. 3

100

95

66

45

20

ZCB 2030

100

95

40

0

0

WWF / ecofys

100

95

70

30

0

Welsh Assembly

100

95

60

44

24

The important points are:-

Both WWF and ZCB2030 propose a reduction to zero net carbon emissions while the three government sources do not envisage this.

As a result ZCB and WWF both have a more rapid decline in emissions, and this is critical – you have to look at the area under the line to understand the continued build up of greenhouse gases. The ZCB plan notes that in the developed countries we need to go faster than the average because of our per capita higher emissions.

Rather lost in this summary are the assumptions. ZCB in particular combines an an ambitious reduction in energy consumption (Power Down) with plans to replace the use of fossil hydrocarbons. They also take account of land use emissions. The government’s carbon budget does not include clear targets to Power Down. WWF also propose a reduction, but to 85% by 2050 rather than ZCB’s 50% by 2030. David MacKay in his book Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air makes an identical proposal to that of WWF – it is good they propose powering down, but this is likely to be too little and too late. Perhaps someone would like to calculate the difference between WWF and ZCB in terms of CO2e put into the atmosphere?

Neither ZCB nor the WWF propose the use of Nuclear.

Here are some additional comparisons. They are less complete due to the gaps in some of the plans (to be slightly charitable here, the government has noted that there are a number of possible pathways to its inadequate 80% 2050 target). I have added David MacKay’s projection on reduced energy consumption and the SNP government’s impressive target for production from renewables (although it would be difficult to generalise from the Scottish case to the NW).

Increase in renewable production

SEAP

2

6

ZCB 2030

100

WWF / ecofys

100

Proportion of energy from fossil hydrocarbons

ZCB 2030

0

0

WWF / ecofys

0

SNP

0

Energy demand (%) of baseline)

SEAP

UK carbon budget no. 3

ZCB 2030

50

WWF / ecofys

100

85

MacKay

100

85

Here the lack of ambition of the SEAP report becomes clear. While they do leave out some areas of potential change as outside the scope of the Greater Manchester decision makers / local authorities / AGMA, nevertheless the very limited renewables projection really requires challenge. Likewise the lack of clear and challenging power down targets. On the positive side, there are some indicators that if applied will enable us all to track progress within the bioregion.

This point about Power Down is absolutely crucial. We now know very well that increases in energy efficiency, if not accompanied by clear proposals for powering down will just mean that more energy overall is used. This is called the Jevons Paradox. Why so important in the North West now? Because of the new threat of exploitation of the Bowden Shale for gas. This involves natural gas, trapped in shale rock, that has to be extracted by a process of pressurised injeuction of huge quantities of water, sand and solvents, called fracturing. As this preliminary report from the Tyndall Centre makes clear, exploiting this resource may have some significant risks (although the methods being used in USAnia that have caused such concern will -probably- not all be used here), but most important will (despite the propaganda from the prospectors) have a negative impact on greenhouse gas production, delaying necessary action.

So far as I can see AGMA’s environment commission hasn’t commented on this burning (well not quite yet) issue on our doorstep – further argument for a bioregional approach rather than focussing on the urban conurbation as the definition of the subregion. However, the Co-op (which funded the Tyndall research), the Green Party and the Labour Party have opposed the drilling (the latter provisionally. Of course the risks and assessments have been ignored by our golpista prime minister.

Like this:

The coalition vandals have ended (from 1 April) the Sustainable Development Commission. Here is one of their last contributions – a useful piece of work that helps us operationalise the notion of ecological limits at a local (and therefore also bioregional) level.

“‘Living within environmental limits’ is one of the five principles of sustainable development. It is easy to talk about environmental limits, and many of us accept that such limits must exist. But how do we recognise them? How do we know when we’re bumping up against them? What can we do to prevent those limits being breached? And with the re-energised focus on local decision making we ask, what do they mean for local areas?

…

“We have proposed a definition of environmental limits and examined seven ‘key’ environmental areas under OECD’s ‘Pressure-State-Response’ framework, highlighting existing legislative limits and where these do not exist. We have considered ‘land use’ and ‘soils’ as particular areas for government action as there is currently little or no action taken to recognise environmental limits in these areas. The report also makes suggestions for action by local governance bodies and community groups.”

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Message sent to me by the people organising the campaign against the government’s sell off of our forest lands:-

WE’VE WON! The government has just confirmed they’re totally scrapping the forest sell-off. The phoney consultation has been cancelled. The sinister legal changes to pave the way for privatisation have been dropped.

We did this together. Next time someone tries to tell any of us that signing petitions or emailing our MPs doesn’t work, we’ll know exactly what to say: “People power does work. Just look at the Save Our Forests campaign”.

Now I don’t want to pour cold water on what is a good victory, but why was this campaign successful while other campaigns are having less success? The privatisation of the NHS, the withdrawal of Education Maintenance Allowance, the punitive and destructive 25% cuts in our council’s budget- these all go on despite campaigns and petitions.

The reason has to do with class – in an old fashioned sense. This was not a campaign of the urban working class, or even particularly of the liberal intelligentsia. This was a campaign with broad support that included the tories’ core constituency, Old Rural England.

It is shocking that when environmental destruction threatens us all so profoundly, that it has still not been possible to create a campaigning alliance across the lines of class, between the country and the city, and between those of us living in the Imperial Triad core countries (North America, Europe, Japan) and those in the global South, that calls for another way of living, another way of earning, another way of using the resources of the earth.

The reason is that the campaigning focus of selling the forests is pretty easy to pinpoint, a clear demand against a policy that is not absolutely core to the Cameron-Clegg regime’s project. The wider onslaught against public services and the environmental emergency are deeper problems to deal with, constituted as they are by a system of capital accumulation that knows no stopping and that restlessly invents new ways to overcome its setbacks – at whatever the cost to human lives and the planet’s health.

Maybe though this initial success, protecting our forests does after all show us that change can be created by the will of the people (as in the Arab world just now). Perhaps we just have to expect more, finding other emblematic foci for further campaigns that allow invigoration of the movement for change by its successes, and allow the broadening of that movement (composed of those who didn’t vote for this regime, even if they might have voted for some of its members) to take in diverse and contradictory currents all running together into an irresistible flow.

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This major new report from CAT presents an alternative energy strategy for the UK.
It is very well researched and proposes a practical plan for total decarbonisation of the UK energy supply by 2030. It notes that in the UK we need to move faster and sooner than most current plans – it takes account of the embodied energy in our imports and also recognises that nations like ours need to cut more than those still trying to catch up in terms of basic prosperity.
It is also an excellent resource. £40 to buy but here is a (large) download.http://www.zcb2030.org/

Like this:

We are living in an ecological emergency and an economic crisis. This pamphlet brings together three contributions to what will have to become an ambitious but alternative strategy for real change in the way we all live. The three essays printed here start from the recognition that endless economic growth is not possible. Getting Started on the Economy also points to the incoherence of competition in the global economy as a national or regional economic strategy, sets out some alternative principles for building the replacement economy and suggests priorities for activists to help bring them about. Sustainability, Utopian and Scientific offers a constructive critique of what has become mainstream green economic thinking. Concepts for Bioregional Development is an attempt to synthesise a new integrated vocabulary for the new economics of social and ecological justice. It should be read in conjunction with our first pamphlet: A Green Deal for Manchester-Mersey Bioregion.

Scottish island of Eigg wins green energy prize

“The success of the project proves that when communities are incentivised, empowered and supported they become a compelling force in solving some of society’s biggest challenges.”

ALthough the conditions are very different in the Mersey/Manchester bioregion, this kind of intelligent self reliance, reducing our dependence on imported energy and using complementatry sources linked togeher, is what we are after here.

Produce a Manchester Energy Plan that provides the framework for establishing a city-wide decarbonised energy generation and distribution system and local energy plans supported by the LDF and Strategic Regeneration Frameworks. Establish the partnerships and investments needed to develop and deliver the Energy Plan and the structures needed to integrate projects sharing heat, power and ‘smart grid’ information, and to manage them.

And did you miss this story last summer? –

Manchester’s manure to fill gas grid from 2011

The figures in this story are interesting – a lot of gas, but nowhere near enough to power all our homes – let alone all the vehicles. There really is no alternative to reduce reduce reduce our energy horizons.

I like this report – it very effectively debunks the current hegemony of the supposed need to make savage cuts in public spending, and it makes the connection again between the crisis caused by the bursting of the credit bubbles and the need to decarbonise energy and the economy.But like the New Green Deal it remains essentially a Fabian document – telling truth to power as if this will create the needed change. There is no theory of action, no praxis. It is essentially Utopian sustainability.
Secondly, it fails to address the argument (of Tim Jackson and others) that sustainable growth is a chimera because it is no possible to de-link resource throughput from growth. The document is arguing for (a green) Keynesian stimulus to get growth going again. maybe that speaks to those in power, but it leaves a big question – can there actually be a green ‘business as usual’?
The root of this second problem is the accumulative core of capitalism. Capitalism works on the accumulation (growth) of capital) extracted as surplus value together with the energy and other subsidies extracted from the natural world. It is this motor that has faltered in the present conjuncture – because the previous fix – financialisation of the economy had burst. What we see now is a combination of the internal and external contradictions of capitalism.
This is difficult to say and be heard since the whole world system (pretty much) is addicted to capitalist growth as an engine of wellbeing. NEF does a good job in problematising this, but it does not reach deeply enough into the root causes of the problem. Consequently it has neither an adequate diagnosis of the problem that needs to be fixed nor a convincing praxis or theory of action. Not that I’m saying this is an easy thing!
For an essay length exploration of these connected issues see my article:https://greendealmanchester.wordpress.com/sustainability-utopian-and-scientific/
But thanks anyway NEF for doing what you do. Just because it can be criticised doesn’t mean it should be rejected out of hand – I’m just trying to suggest (very roughly) where you need to amend the model and carry out new lines of work to take it further.